Thursday, May 29, 2008

Vegetable Tempura


It has been a while since I last made tempura & a quick check in the fridge revealed that I had all my favorite veggies for tempura. I don't make this often cos I don't really like to deep fry. But since I had to deep fry the wontons/spring rolls , I thought alright let's make tempura too.

My 3 favorite vegetables to do a tempura with are aubergines, red peppers & zucchinis. I'm not a big fan of red peppers although I will eat it but I absolutely love it tempura'd. I would normally also do shrimp tempura but I'd already used them all up for my wontons so I decided to do some with fish instead (not shown in the picture).

For the tempura batter, I used ready mix packet but since it was running low, I mixed in some fluor. If you don't have any tempura batter mix, just make your own, my mum uses only fluor & cold water. Unfortunately I can't really give you exact estimations cos I really do this by feel. But you can follow the one used here (I don't add egg tho). Besides I like my batter to be light ie. barely coating the vegetable unlike the ones that are like thick jackets completely encasing the vegetable, so I make it a little more watery.

Make sure the oil is very hot before you start. Test by adding a little drop of batter into the oil. The red peppers cook really quickly. Aubergines & zucchinis take longer. Once they are brown, remove else they will absorb too much oil. I always do the seafood or fish last so that the oil doesn't get too fishy.

Tempura Dip

1 cup water
1 Tbsp daishi stock
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup mirin

Add all together in a pan. Bring to a boil then simmer. Serve it warm together with tempura.





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